Home at last after a week with Yale Strom and the Eldridge Street Klezmer Tour in upstate New York. It was a blast... I got to play with some of the best musicians in the Klezmer scene, many of whom I had not really crossed paths with before. Like my buddy Mark Rubin says - for a musician, what is important
is not the gig... it's the hang, the chance to be with other musicians sharing similar interests and a similarly warped sense of musicians humor. For me, being on stage watching ex-Klezmatic Alicia Svigals treat her violin as an amplified rock instrument in the context of a Bukovina Jewish fiddle tune was equivalent to a year studying in a music conservatory.
The winner of the 2007 Eldridge Street Klezmer Tour "Miss Popularity" award goes to Miss
Susan Watts, trumpeter extraordinaire and general all-around party animator/animal/vegetable/mineral. She sings, she blows horn, but let this woman in front of a mike and she turns into a dadaist version of Sarah Silverman meets Miles Davis. Folks, this is a case of nature, not nurture. Or both. Susan's Grandfather was Jacob Hoffman, the 1920s Philadelphia klezmer bandleader whose
klezmer xylophone solos appeared on many of the early klezmer reissue CDs. her Mom,
Elaine Hoffman Watts, just won the 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Award for her preservation of the
old klezmer drumming style.
Susan grew up in a family atmosphere full of music, and she developed monster chops which, happily, she now applies to Jewish music instead of serving evil. Other interesting facts: she can eat horrible Litvak sweet gefilte fish, claiming she will eat "any Jewish food." Not even other Jews will eat "any" Jewish food.
Ewwww. Here's a shakey bit of video taken during a sound check (in an acoustic hall
without a sound system in Rockchester, NY) that illustrates the level of energy Susan can generate in her music:
Home at last after a week with Yale Strom and the Eldridge Street Klezmer Tour in upstate New York. It was a blast... I got to play with some of the best musicians in the Klezmer scene, many of whom I had not really crossed paths with before. Like my buddy Mark Rubin says - for a musician, what is important is not the gig... it's the hang, the chance to be with other musicians sharing similar interests and a similarly warped sense of musicians humor. For me, being on stage watching ex-Klezmatic Alicia Svigals treat her violin as an amplified rock instrument in the context of a Bukovina Jewish fiddle tune was equivalent to a year studying in a music conservatory.
The winner of the 2007 Eldridge Street Klezmer Tour "Miss Popularity" award goes to Miss Susan Watts, trumpeter extraordinaire and general all-around party animator/animal/vegetable/mineral. She sings, she blows horn, but let this woman in front of a mike and she turns into a dadaist version of Sarah Silverman meets Miles Davis. Folks, this is a case of nature, not nurture. Or both. Susan's Grandfather was Jacob Hoffman, the 1920s Philadelphia klezmer bandleader whose klezmer xylophone solos appeared on many of the early klezmer reissue CDs. her Mom, Elaine Hoffman Watts, just won the 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Award for her preservation of the old klezmer drumming style.
Susan grew up in a family atmosphere full of music, and she developed monster chops which, happily, she now applies to Jewish music instead of serving evil. Other interesting facts: she can eat horrible Litvak sweet gefilte fish, claiming she will eat "any Jewish food." Not even other Jews will eat "any" Jewish food. Ewwww. Here's a shakey bit of video taken during a sound check (in an acoustic hall without a sound system in Rockchester, NY) that illustrates the level of energy Susan can generate in her music:
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